Social Disorganisation
Definition
The condition of a neighbourhood in which social institutions have weakened to the point where they can no longer effectively regulate behaviour or socialise residents into shared norms. Measured by indicators including poverty rates, residential mobility, family disruption, and ethnic heterogeneity.
- Field
- Criminology, environmental crime theory
- Key indicators
- Poverty, residential mobility, family disruption, ethnic heterogeneity
- Origin
- Chicago School (Shaw and McKay)
- Contrast
- Individual-level theories that locate crime causes in the offender, not the neighbourhood
Common questions
Does social disorganisation theory blame individual residents for crime?+
No. It locates the cause in weakened neighbourhood institutions such as schools, churches and informal networks, not in the character of the people living there. Two neighbourhoods with similar populations can have very different crime rates depending on how intact those institutions are.
How is social disorganisation different from poverty alone?+
Poverty is one input indicator, but the theory argues that poverty only produces high crime when it coincides with high residential turnover and mixed ethnic composition, because those conditions stop stable social ties from forming. A poor but stable, homogeneous area can still regulate behaviour effectively.
Related terms
- Atavism
- Lombroso's concept that born criminals were evolutionary throwbacks to a more primitive human type, identifiable by physical stigmata. The concept is scientifically...
- Broken Windows Theory
- The proposition by Wilson and Kelling (1982) that visible signs of physical and social disorder invite further disorder and serious crime by...
- Classical School
- The eighteenth-century intellectual tradition in criminology, associated with Beccaria and Bentham, that treats offenders as rational actors and argues for proportionate, certain,...
- Collective Efficacy
- A concept developed by Robert Sampson referring to the combination of social cohesion among neighbours and their shared willingness to intervene in...
- Conflict Criminology
- A family of theories holding that criminal law and its enforcement reflect the interests of powerful social groups rather than universal moral...
- Feminist Criminology
- A body of theory and research that critiques the androcentric bias of mainstream criminology, making visible the gendered dimensions of both offending...
- Labelling Theory
- The perspective, associated with Becker and Lemert, that deviance is not a property of the act but a consequence of the social...
- Left Realism
- A criminological perspective developed by Jock Young, Roger Matthews, and others in the 1980s, arguing that critical criminology had neglected the real...
- Positivist School
- The nineteenth-century tradition, associated with Lombroso, Ferri, and Garofalo, that rejected free will and sought causes of crime in measurable biological, psychological,...
- Strain Theory
- Merton's 1938 theory that crime results from a structural gap between culturally valued goals and the legitimate means available to achieve them....
Explained in these topics
- History of Criminological ThoughtThe breakdown of community institutions, informal social controls, and shared norms in a neighbourhood, identified by Shaw and McKay as the structural cause of...
- Social Disorganisation and Critical Criminology